Did 9/11 ensure Republican hegemony in New York?

Yes, Green nearly blew the primary election and gave it to Fernando Ferrer, an absolute special interest candidate and a puppet of Al Sharpton. He still had a 40-point lead over Michael Bloomberg and the numbers didn't really move until 9/11. That started a huge swing to Bloomberg which Green aided by freaking out and saying he would have done as good a job on 9/11 as Rudy. (This seems less offensive six years on.) Giuliani endorsed Bloomberg and his post-9/11 Midas touch gave him the election, narrowly.

Obviously McArdle (and a few million other people) lived through this, but so soon after Karl Rove's adieu it seems worthwhile to point it out. The GOP's lock on Gracie Mansion has less to do with New York's one-party interest group-driven politics than the political serendipity of 9/11, just like Bush's 2002 and 2004 election wins obviously owed more to his "bullhorn moment" and al Qaeda fears than Rove's Shaolin realignment-fu.

Mmmm . . . maybe. I concede that 9/11 had a big impact, but it's more complicated than that. The Democratic primary was supposed to be held on September 11th; one of my friends saw the towers hit as she came out of the voting booth. The primary ended up being held on September 25th, and Green's ultimate win may plausibly be attributed to a rightward shift post-9/11. The nomination in 2005 went to . . . Fernando Ferrer.

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